A Philosophy Lesson

I switched newspapers this week.

You may not think it's a major life-changing decision, but I do. Since the first week that I lived here in the 'Burg, I read the Baltimore Sun everyday (my initial reasons are explained here). Mostly it came down to the fact that in my head, I was looking toward Baltimore (or a similar larger-sized market) as where I would be going next after I made a name for myself in radio here, so it made sense that I wanted to familiarize myself with the area. If the store had run out of the Sun, then I would get the Washington Post, which you actually have to make a serious time investment to read, especially if you get the Sunday edition. The front section will usually run about 32 pages, and the majority of it is "analysis" of news stories, rather than the actual news itself. Let's face it, Saturday is traditionally a slow news day, and you have to fill 32 pages somehow. I also liked the Baltimore and Washington papers because the closer you get to the Beltway, the more fanatically liberal the writers of letters to the editor are, and therefore ripe for being picked on by me, whether just in conversation, or sometimes in this column.

However, after a while, I really couldn't justify my daily purchase of the Baltimore Sun. The original reason seemed to fall flat, even though I have achieved success in this market to the point that I feel I can move up to bigger and better things someday soon. Still, I live in Pennsylvania, I pay Pennsylvania taxes, I can vote in Pennsylvania elections (and just like most Pennsylvanians, I have no clue which way I'm going to go in the election for governor). Even though the majority of my listening area and possibly the majority of my listeners live in Maryland, I live and broadcast from Pennsylvania, and so I have switched allegiances to the Harrisburg Patriot-News. What, did you think I was going to read the Chambersburg Public Opinion? On Sundays, maybe, so I can get coupons, but my stance on comics stands; I need more than one page, and not only are there two pages of comics in the Patriot, but they're IN COLOR! And I actually get to read about stuff going on at Susquehanna, my alma mater. So there you have it, out with Maryland red, in with the Blue and White. Goodbye College Park, hello State College. Not that I'm junking my Orangemen, mind you; even though they are now 1-3, I will refer you back to my column of last week and confirm that I am still sticking with my team. Besides, didn't Penn State lose in OT this weekend too?

However, I will miss certain things from the Sun. Most notably, I will miss the op-ed page. I will miss KAL and Mike Lane's constant portrayal of President Bush as the worst president in history (KAL frequently draws him as a cowboy; Mike Lane has Bush as a little kid). I will miss Jules Witcover's occasional good points on politics, and more frequent cheerleading for Al Gore and anyone else who he thinks is able to take down Bush in '04. And I will miss Molly Ivins, for proving herself over and over as the perfect example of today's liberal Democrat. I'll explain...

While most liberal Democrats are still privately fueled by their anger at Bush over the results of the 2000 presidential election, Ivins is fueled by Bush beating Anne Richards for governor of Texas in 1994. See, Miz Ivins is from Texas, and so every time she trashes Bush, she uses as a "for instance" some policy he advocated in Texas that she was against. She has pleaded for congressional Democrats to start advocating the repeal of the Bush tax cut, which I have previously mentioned here the Democrats will not do, because they know they lose the Senate if they do. She has branded the Republicans solely responsible for corporate wrongdoings, and thinks that the real way to stop more abuses from happening is to gut Clinton-era deregulations like the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Never mind that in doing so, the radio industry would fall apart, because if this act was repealed, the old ownership limits would go back into place and companies that have grown because of the relaxing of those limits would be forced to sell most of their stations for scrap, forcing thousands to lose their jobs. And that's just radio; one can only imagine the destruction it would do to the other telecommunications areas that the law covers.

However, her topper came in a recent column, the one from September 5th. She tried to pop the balloon that is the Republican "class warfare" argument; you know the one, the argument that says Democrats try to pit voters against the rich and make people believe that the rich are the cause of all problems and they should be taxed as much as possible. It's the argument that helped get Bill Clinton elected president... then we found out that Clinton's concept of "rich" was anyone who makes over $30,000 a year. Anyway, she claimed that the "right-wing ideologues" have lost touch with reality, because Republicans want to prevent future Enrons by cutting the capital gains tax. Other moves to lessen the tax burden on stock owners are dismissed by Miz Ivins with sarcasm like, "There's one for the coupon clippers". You see, Molly obviously believes that only the richest 1% of Americans own stock; owning stock is the reason they are rich, and therefore we must tax heavily the earnings of these "rich" stockholders. What she fails to grasp is that more Americans than ever before own stock, more middle and lower class Americans own stock; they will profit just as much as the rich from moves like this. Hell, even I own stock, although like most Americans, my portfolio has seen better days. She lumps in new start-up small businesses with the wealthy corporate owners who store their earnings in tax shelters, saying that letting start-ups go tax free for a couple years is a "great idea", considering "since corporations aren't paying corporate taxes now, why not give them a further break?" And she claims that the average after-tax income of middle-class Americans today is lower than it was 25 years ago, without mentioning what tax rates are today vs. yesterday. 5 will get you 10 that taxes on the middle class are higher today than in 1977; you can thank President Clinton calling you "rich" for that. And finally, she pulled out what continues to be among the dumbest tactic in the liberal playbook, referring to the Bush tax cut as only helping the "richest 1% of Americans", and calling that the real "class warfare". Last I checked, the richest 1% pay the most taxes, 40% of them at last check. And I will once again note that I (whose income was well below the "poverty line" last year) got a refund check from the government last year and that if I ran the math, it would prove that MY taxes were lower last year than in 2000.

No, Molly, it is YOU who has lost touch with reality, you and your entire end of the ideological spectrum. Your party specializes in having all or most of its national figures reading off the same set of talking points, which are mostly based on ideology and not fact. Your party caters to those who are too dumb to do fact-checking on your claims, and you retain members and attract new ones by playing to these dumb people with your visions of government solving everyone's problems and hiding the fact that it will require most of the people's incomes given in taxes to do it. In other words, as far as I can tell, the Democratic Party is the party of the clueless and ignorant, on the national level anyway.

Yup, I will miss reading you, Molly, because you are so out of touch with the rest of the country that it is just too easy to make fun of you. This is only going to make my job harder...

Caution: Bandwagon-Jumping Ahead

I would have said it first, but technical difficulties allowed John Madden to beat me to it.

Madden noted yesterday during "Sunday NFL Countdown" on ESPN (the only pre-game show I watch, therefore I guess, it's the "official NFL pre-game show of THIS JUST IN!!!") that the vast majority of injuries across the NFL landscape have been caused lately by fans jumping onto and off of bandwagons. It was also entertaining to hear Madden say "torn meniscuses"... is that even grammatically correct? Like I'm one to talk...

Anyway, it's true; from pro to college right down to high schools, September is the month that involves the most bandwagon jumping of any month of the sports year. You have major league baseball fans giving up on their teams chances (unless of course, you're a Mets fan like me, in which case you gave up right about the moment they set the NL record for home futility). You have NFL fans waiting until their teams got to about 0-2 to start calling for the coach's head, and the same would be true of college football fans, especially ones in a certain upstate New York town. You also have people misinterpreting 2-0 starts for the beginning of a Super Bowl/national championship/state playoffs season and then taking big-time abuse when their teams throw that 2-0 start away.

I was sitting at the bar at BJ's in Selinsgrove not too long ago, sharing beers and stories with some alumni and former PR office co-workers from my days at Susquehanna. We had just dropped our opener, 27-7, to McDaniel (the college formerly known as Western Maryland), and I was thrilled... that we had held them to 27 points. After all, this is the same team that hung 63 on us at their place last year; it was 21-0 five minutes into the game. Anyway, we were watching Notre Dame beat Michigan to go to 3-0 for the first time in a few years; later that night, Penn State would crush Nebraska to go to 2-0 and get back in the national spotlight. Mike Ferlazzo, the fountain of Susquehanna sports knowledge, looked down the bar at us and quipped, "Ya know, if the Irish hang on here and Penn State wins tonight, there are gonna be a lot of 'long-time fans' coming out of the woodwork..."

You know what he was talking about, the people who either keep their mouth shut during the bad times and conveniently pack away their team gear, or worse yet, they're the folks who ran Bob Davie out of South Bend and tried to force Joe Paterno into early retirement. Then again, JoePa being 75, it wouldn't exactly be "early" retirement, but I digress... Well, sure enough, Notre Dame is now 4-0 after pulling another win out of their Irish, and Penn State has rolled to a 3-0 start; they're both top 15 teams. Meanwhile, back up north in Syracuse, the bandwagon has been pretty short-staffed for a while. Another 0-2 start has the natives restless, but then again what else would you expect in a town whose three favorite sports are SU football, SU basketball, and trashing the coaches of those two teams. The attendance for the home opener was 39,000 paid, 35,000 actual, and about 10,000 by the time North Carolina kicked off to SU with three minutes remaining. Should I mention at this point that SU was only down 8 and still had a chance to win the game? Naturally, the Orange promptly fumbled away the kickoff, thus proving the locals lack of faith in them was justified. Is there anyplace that could be worse than that?

Well, yes. Try being a follower of the 2000 Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. Check that, the 2000 Super Bowl champion, 2001 AFC semifinalist, and currently 0-2 Baltimore Ravens. And they're a BAD 0-2; they've scored a grand total of 7 points. I have mentioned before that Baltimore Sun columnist Mike Preston was probably wishing for this so he could rev up the "fire Brian Billick now" campaign, and he's not alone with that; such is the case when the coach has the label of "offensive genius". Preston has been noticeably absent from the coach-bashing, but he did note when Bawlamer lost their opener to the freakin' Carolina Panthers that the Ravens now should be one of the two or three worst teams in the NFL. Well, now Carolina is 3-0; I wonder if he still thinks that. Then again, I wonder if Carolina fans are screaming "Super Bowl, baby!" Either perspective may be excessively dumb. I bring this note of optimism to Baltimore fans: they didn't lose yesterday. Of course, it was a bye week...

The Rams are 0-2, and counting last year's Super Bowl and the preseason, they're 0-7. I think their bandwagon may have tipped over from so many fans jumping off at once. And the grumbling extends back to Selinsgrove, where Saturday's 50-3 demolition at the hands of arch-rival Lycoming made Susquehanna another BAD 0-2 team. After last year's 0-4 and 1-5 start, the right question may well be the one we were all asked at BJ's by a distraught Crusader parent following the McDaniel loss: "Are we going to be any good at all this year?" Meanwhile, nobody believed the Patriots would be any good this year; we were told they were a one-year wonder, that Drew Bledsoe was still a better QB than Tom Brady and the records of the Pats and Buffalo Bills would reflect that. Here are their current records: Patrots 3-0, Bills 1-2 (thanks to a nice bank shot field goal off the crossbar at Minnesota, otherwise they're 0-3). But hey, Drew's QB rating is good, that should keep those Bills fans who liked Rob Johnson over Doug Flutie happy.

Do I even need to bring up the Jets? Chad Morton is the only reason they're not 0-3, and my voice is going hoarse from screaming for Herman Edwards to finally wise up and yank Interceptaverde for Chad Pennington. And the list goes on and on, cuz there are plenty of other teams that have either exceeded expectations or fallen far short of them. The obvious needs to be stated here: it's a long season. 16 games for the NFL, 12 (at least) for college, 8-10 for the high schoolers, depending on what state you hail from. There's plenty of time for anyone to turn it around. Take a lesson from those New England Patriots and their oh-so-dreamy QB, Mr. Brady (sorry, that's what a certain YMCA co-worker of mine thinks, I don't swing that way...) They started 0-2 and lost Bledsoe to an injury... season over. Of course, we all know that was not the case, but nobody in Patriot Nation thought the amazing run that resulted would happen. They were probably grabbing ropes to hang Belichick with. Can the Ravens, Crusaders, and Orangemen turn it around and make a great run? Well, no. You may say nothing is impossible, but I'm sorry, for those three teams, it is. Can the Rams and Steelers make a run? Sure, and they probably will. Will Notre Dame, the Saints, and Penn State lose? Yeah, probably. But if you are a fan of these teams or any team for that matter, you need to take the attitude that I take: My team is going to lose. They are going to lose a few times, or more than a few times. My team may never reach the playoffs or the BCS again, but ya know what? I'm cool with that, because it's just sports. My life does not depend on my teams winning titles.

That being said, I should note my favorite football teams are a combined 3-8. I'm very good at adhering to my philosophy...

Yes Folks, We HAVE Changed

So here we are, one year later. I guess I need to write something relevant here in this space about what happened a year ago and what we've done since and how we've all changed. It's kinda hard to just sit down and write something for one specific date in history, especially only one year out. It was even harder to discuss what various people in my life would do to observe the anniversary of 9-11. It sounds pretty silly to ask, "Hey, what are you doing for 9-11?", like I'm asking "What are you doing for vacation?" or "What are you doing for Christmas?"

First of all, I'm not going to do one of the obligatory "where were you when" pieces. I wrote about that in the immediate aftermath of the attacks; if you want to read that, go here. And besides, it seems like more people would like to remember how we all felt in the hours, days, and weeks after the attacks than during them; the new sense of community we all had as Americans, the appreciation for the men and women in uniform (military, police, and fire), and the togetherness we all sought with loved ones. As such, I really don't remember my emotions and feelings on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, as much as I want to remember the events of Saturday, September 15, 2001. On that afternoon, I drove up to Susquehanna University, my alma mater, to watch our boys take on rival Lycoming. Not because it was football, not because it was my alma mater, and not because it was our biggest rival, but because I wanted to be someplace that felt like home, and actual home being five hours away, I sought the company of the friends I still had at Susquehanna. I still remember the atmosphere; very charged up emotionally, because people still had feelings to vent about the attacks and those who perpetrated them. Sitting in a jam-packed Lopardo Stadium, with the flags at half-staff, cheering on our team as they got stomped for the second straight week, but we were all together, and that's what the day was about. The need for us all to come together and be with loved ones and enjoy something uniquely American and uniquely pleasing as a Division III college football game.

Turn on the television or flip open a magazine this week, and you'll see a redux of the last year and what all has happened, both the immediate reactions we had to the events of 9-11, and also the later things we did, such as the war in Afghanistan. Emotions did start coming back to me then; I'm just as incredulous now as I was then toward Clear Channel Broadcasting with its list of songs that should not be played, from things as trivial as "Walk Like an Egyptian" to songs that may have sounded threatening to CC's decidedly conservative political beliefs like John Lennon's "Imagine". We also had to see Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame the attacks on "the abortionists, the pagans, the gays, the lesbians..." that apparently by their very existence caused America to become a terrorist target. I am still outraged by that, and I think the lesson we all learned about ourselves and each other in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 is that all of our true beliefs come out for all the world to see in times like that, when the layers of conscience or doubt are stripped away by the sheer emotional gravity of the moment.

I've read Rolling Stone's 9-11 issue and MTV's post-9-11 special (a very well-done piece of journalism, by the way), and seen them almost search in vain for proof that anything has really changed in America since last September 11th. We look at the predictions that were made about how we would all be changed by the events of the day: music will go from the pop fluff of previous years to serious songs with incisive lyrics, hard rock and rap-metal will be unfavorable because it will only remind people of what happened on 9-11, and of course, the all-time classic: "the end of irony". Well, if you're scoring at home: 1) music was already heading away from pop to begin with, and for the most part today it has pretty much left the radar screen, 2) hard rock and rap-metal, if anything, have become bigger today than they were last September, and 3) no, irony didn't completely go away, but it did disappear just long enough to get Bill Maher fired.

If anything, the most ironic thing of them all to happen was how the nation slowly started to reject all things 9-11 rather than use them to rally the troops like Pearl Harbor once did. The breaking point may have come at the Super Bowl, when U2 put on an awesome show in which the names of the victims of the attacks scrolled behind the band on a screen and Bono showed the American flag lining on his jacket at the end of the performance. Almost immediately, the columnists started circling like vultures, saying as one, "ENOUGH ALREADY! We've had enough of these 9-11 tributes, this is the Super Bowl, we want to forget what happened on September 11th, and HOW DARE YOU, Bono, play with our national symbol like you have, you're not even AMERICAN!!!" In fact, despite the significance that some U2 songs have had in helping people deal with the tragedy, one influential rock station which shall go nameless has declared that it will definitely NOT play anything by U2 today, for that reason alone, because they're not an AMERICAN band. I'm sorry but closed-mindedness and jingoism like that is not necessary to observe the 9-11 anniversary. If anything, we should embrace that people who are not from our country have rallied around us as we seek to become one global community.

That being said, we should all be proud to be Americans today, and nobody has captured that spirit once again quite like Bruce Springsteen. I was doing my warm-up stretches the other day at the Y, preparing to work out, and "The Rising" came on the all-music channel that is piped throughout the weight room. I had heard the song before, including seeing Springsteen's inspired performance of the song at the VMAs, but at that moment, I just felt so pumped up by hearing it; it was really the first time I had felt like I did in the weeks after 9-11, excited and fired up and just plain PROUD to be American.

So, I will admit that I have changed since last September 11th; we all have, anyone who tells you they have not been changed by what happened a year ago is LYING. Oh, I'm still as cynical and sarcastic as ever; one look at the columns I've written in the past year proves that. However, I think what has changed most about me is that I have a greater awareness of the world around me. Not long after 9-11, I was forced to take a second job, due to financial constraints, and I took a job working at the front desk at the Chambersburg YMCA. It didn't occur to me right away, but rather soon after I started working there that by doing this, I pretty much was doing just what our president asked us all to do in his speech to Congress after the attacks; to become more involved in my community. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was no doubt concerned primarily with me; my career, mostly, which had just taken a new path with my move to the 'Burg from Syracuse. Today, I still worry about my job (often needlessly), but I also see this time of year as the kids around here are back in school, and how are my co-workers doing in both jobs, and what's happening in town this week (although the answer to that is usually nothing). If you don't already feel these things, perhaps today is as good a day as any to start. Nothing has taught us about the fleeting things in our world, most importantly life itself, quite like last September 11th has.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

We unfortunately have been treated lately to a noticeable lack of interesting news. There really isn't anything of late that I've felt the need to go off on; Bush has been in Texas at the ranch, Congress was in recess, and most of the headlines have been rehashes of the recent past... whether to go to war with Iraq (we shouldn't), the tug of war over the economy, and so on. Luckily for me, I had football picks to make the past two weeks, but then what? Well, at the perfect time, here comes the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, a week early this year, no less. Talk about a columnist's dream, at least in my case.

As always, MTV starts with the pre-show, and immediately you have to realize that this is not CBS or even the E! Network, it's MTV News. As such, you have a different, uh, standard of journalism. I really wonder what goes through Kurt Loder's head every time they throw to the guy with the mohawk. I don't know about you, but I'll tell ya, nothing screams "professional TV journalist" to me like a good tall mohawk. Meanwhile, Gideon Yago has The Strokes wrestling each other in front of him, and Mr. Loder still has to put up with Suchin Pak, who still has a job despite my pleas last year.

Then there was Jimmy Fallon, who opened the show by managing to ape everyone from Nelly to Dave Matthews to Avril Lavigne (she, by the way, loved it; then again, what 17-year old wouldn't dig being huge enough to be impersonated on the VMA's). His stage presence, however, was like that of a high school kid making his first speech in public speaking class: scared out of his freakin' mind.

I decided to enhance my VMA's experience by printing off a list of the nominees for the major categories beforehand and choosing which one would be the "right" pick for the award, and which one would be the "wrong" one. You should try it next year, it might make a great party game. Anyway, I got 4 "right" picks and one "wrong" one. Maybe I just assumed that since MTV handed over all the big ones to 'N Sync last year, they would do it again this year. Or maybe they actually read the tea leaves this time.

For the Best Pop Video, I had Michelle Branch picked, and it would have been poetic justice to have Britney Spears have to give that moonman to the Anti-Britney herself, but alas, No Doubt won the award. At least 'N Sync didn't get it (my "wrong" pick, obviously). Oh, speaking of them, I don't know if you all noticed the quick cut to 'N Sync as No Doubt was heading up to the stage; I had the thing on tape, so I went back and looked again a couple of times. What I saw was Chris Kirkpatrick with his head down and a look on his face that can only say, "Guys, I think we're through." The look that players have on their faces when they're losing in the final minutes of their last game.

Although they did have an awkward presenter-winner moment, when Christina Aguilera had to give the Best Male Award to none other than Eminem, who slammed her in "The Real Slim Shady". Her reaction was priceless: "Interesting...", as in, "Are you kidding me? I've gotta give this award to HIM???" Based on Slim Shady's reaction, I'd say he pretty much felt the same way about who he was getting the thing from. What happened next, you all know if you saw the original live broadcast, only I had to look it up online because those slick editors at MTV chopped it out for the replays. If you don't know, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog (who flopped last year) was picking on Moby and tried to make light of Eminem trashing him in "Without Me". Slim and his posse proceeded to go after the puppet, seriously, not part of the plan. So, after Eminem gets his award from Miz Aguilera, he proceeds to blame "that girl Moby" for his stammering speech, at which point, he got booed. I will repeat that I did not see this, as I did not tape the original broadcast; Syracuse was losing to, errrr, playing BYU and I thought that more important. My bad.

Oh, and speaking of messed-up moments, The White Stripes picking up their Breakthrough Video award from the Olsen twins?

Then there was the TLC tribute, one of the most emotionally riveting scenes in VMA history, as T-Boz and Chilli barely struggled to keep it together long enough to thank everyone for their support since the death of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.

But easily the best moment of the night was Pink accepting the Best Female Award with the following declaration: "I'm too drunk for this..." And she was. Oh, and once again, the MTV censors had days to go back over the tape and bleep a 4-letter bomb out, but they didn't, but then again, Pink WAS drunk, so I guess sometimes you gotta just go with it.

All I thought about this time around was what I wrote about last year and the things going on and the names in the news, and I realize that EVERYTHING is different now. In one year's time. Suddenly, you have Ms. Lavigne, with her double-platinum debut album that has taken up permanent residence in the Top 5, sending Times Square into a frenzy with an awesome rocking performance on the Radio City Music Hall marquee. Suddenly, everyone is voting for Michelle Branch's VMA wardrobe online. Hell, suddenly everyone is voting for Michelle Branch, period; she won the Viewer's Choice Award, an award that in previous years was pretty much reserved for a "boy band". Suddenly, all the young men and women who were huge pop stars a year ago don't want to be pop stars anymore. Britney's taking six months off, Joey from 'N Sync is in movies and on Broadway, Lance is going to the space station, and Christina Aguilera is joining Pink as artists who suddenly want people to hear an album that is "really" them. Oh by the way, I almost threw up when I saw how Christina looked (the appropriate word here would be "skeletal"), and when did she suddenly become ghetto? The only one who still wants to be a pop star is Justin Timberlake, and his performance just seemed so out of place on a night with Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, the Hives, the Vines, and the new rock side of Pink.

The point is the winds of change have blown through MTV, even though they insisted on digging up Guns 'n Roses for the finale and Michael Jackson again for that sham of an "Artist of the Millennium" bit. Ten bucks says he calls them "white devils" next. They actually managed to restore some of their lost credibility tonight, except for one thing: that faux-film look the show had. It just bugged me, it looked like it wasn't live but some concert film shot a few weeks before. They gotta ditch that before next year's VMAs; toss it in the dustbin of bad ideas along with Andrew DIce Clay and the year they let Roseanne host. Still, everyone got something they liked on this night; well, except maybe Britney Spears. Once again, she did not win a single award. She may well now be the Susan Lucci of the VMAs. Oh no, wait, they finally did give Lucci an Emmy that one year, right? OK, never mind; Avril Lavigne will be my wife before Britney wins a VMA...